Rings movie sparks online surge

By Phil Boeyen, ShareChat Business News Editor

Tuesday 18th December 2001

The release of the fantasy adventure movie Lord of the Rings is already paying off for New Zealand as potential US tourists jump on the net to learn more about the country.

Tourism New Zealand reports that the number of visitors to its consumer website, PureNZ.com, has doubled since an associated online promotion went live on the site a week ago.

The tourism promotional body says media exposure in New Zealand and overseas has had an enormous impact on the numbers of people visiting the site, with the majority of the increased number from the United States.

Average visits per day for the month of December before the launch of the movie was around 2,500 per day but this increased to more than 5,300 last Wednesday.

Tourism NZ chief, George Hickton, says an online 'pictorial journey', narrated by Lucy Lawless, appears on the website and introduces several of the key locations of the movies.

"The website is an ideal mechanism to promote awareness of New Zealand as the place where The Lord of the Rings was set.

"Much of our marketing work offshore aims to push consumers to purenz.com. By attracting extra visitors to the site through The Lord of the Rings area, we hope to increase visitor awareness and likelihood to travel to New Zealand."

Mr Hickton says 36% of the visitors to the new feature are from the USA, 15% from Australia and 9% from the UK.

New Zealand has won the rights to call itself 'The Home of Middle Earth' to help promote tourism on the back of the Peter Jackson movie, which holds its Australasian premiere in Wellington this week.

The power of movies as a tourism marketing tool has flourished in recent years, particularly in Ireland, England and Scotland, where tourism organisations have produced special maps to help lucrative US travellers visit the locations of their favourite films.

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